Not bad for a league that has taken its share of body blows with Pitt and Syracuse leaving for the ACC, and the Catholic 7 schools leaving to start their new Big East conference. The AAC's name change will take effect July 1, and 10 members will be a part of its inaugural season: Cincinnati, Connecticut, Houston, Louisville, Memphis, Rutgers, SMU, Temple, USF and UCF.

Louisville (ACC) and Rutgers (Big Ten) will be leaving for new leagues after the season, while East Carolina, Tulane and Tulsa join in 2014. Navy will join in 2015 to move the league to 12. Aresco said he has no further expansion plans for his league, but he remains vigilant about the landscape.

"We’re very happy with the 12 we have," Aresco said. "I think we surprised a lot of people by staying together."

Aresco fielded a number of topics on a Thursday teleconference, including where its men's and women's college basketball tournaments will be held. Memphis, the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut and Philadelphia have been among the potential sites discussed, and Aresco mentioned an official announcement on sites could be had in the next few weeks.

Aresco would not reveal the candidates, but said, “We’re going to be at sites that make (financial) sense for us.” The league figures to do one-year deals to judge performance of a tournament site's effectiveness before considering longer-term deals.

Aresco also revealed that the conference's tournament championship game will be played on the Saturday prior to Selection Sunday, but the precise evening time slot is still to be determined.

The tournament will be televised Wednesday-Saturday on ESPN, and the winner of the tournament still gains an automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament. That was never lost as part of all the upheaval in realignment. “In eyes of NCAA, all we’re doing is changing our name," Aresco said. "We retain our NCAA qualifier as a core conference.”